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What’ca wanna say? Here’s what I wanna say: I’ll be awful fecking glad when this brexit shite is over. I’ve gotten sick and fecking tired of UK this, England that, poppy cock and the DUP’s different ways of saying no. It’s an awful reality TV show gone sour and venal.

There’s a big, bad world out there and the Left is fading into nothingness everywhere. Maybe GW can give us some info on Germany, or maybe other can give insights in other parts of Europe. Maybe some of the American based people can give us some dirt on DSA or OAC.

Is homelessness in Ireland now the norm? Will we begin to accept malnutrition as normal next? Early death because of a crap health service?

Can the EU hold together in the face of different tensions?

Is the Euro doomed due to the inability of member states to control the monetary aspect at national level and also due to there being no automatic capital transfer mechanism across nations or regions?

Will the Left end its love affair with Liberalism and reboot back to its roots as a labour based political movement?

I never thought I’d say this but I’ll be glad when the local elections take place to give us a sense of how far down the rabbit hole of neoliberalism we’ve gone. (I consider the current national arrangement to be a systemic dilution of democracy, but most people seem pretty cool with that.)

Most importantly, will any country be able to beat the fecking Dubs in football this year?

I too am fed up the back molars (what’s left of them) with Brexshit. And that’s just one of the reasons it is so poisonous – it drowns out class politics and is itself only indirectly connected to that.

So implicitly he seems to be planning on a ‘remain and revolt’ strategy against the neoliberal aspects of Maastricht, Lisbon and the fiscal pact. And that from a large EU country.

Bring on the remain vote and bring on the revolt, I say!

“We can’t have no deal on the ballot paper,” McDonnell said. “There’s an overwhelming majority in parliament against that happening, because of the damage.”

McDonnell said he had recently met leading figures from the People’s Vote campaign, including Alastair Campbell and Ed Miliband’s former adviser Tom Baldwin.

The shadow chancellor said he expected May to lose the first vote, and present a tweaked deal that he predicted would fail as well.

“All through that, we will be calling for a general election,” he said. “Whether and when we put a vote of no confidence down will be a tactical decision. We’ll want a maximum effect.”

He said the party had been meeting to discuss coordination with the Scottish National party, the Liberal Democrats and Caroline Lucas of the Greens. “If we can’t get a general election, people’s vote is on the table and that might be an option we seize upon,” he said.

“France is prey to the same “poison” that brought about Brexit, according to President Emmanuel Macron…
“The end of the world and the end of the month: we will and must manage both,” he said…
“Brexit, which took place nearly two years ago, is the same issue,” he claimed.
“These British citizens simply said ‘the world you are offering us is no longer for us, we can’t figure it out. We work hard but don’t see any prospects, we can’t build projects for our children, we live less well: it’s for the City but not for us any more.’” he said…
far-Left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon said his comments would not quell what he called a “popular insurrection”.https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/27/france-prey-poison-caused-brexit-says-emmanuel-macron-seeks/

Mars “Insight” probe has sent back its first pictures of Mars and captures the horizon and daylight pretty well. Rather surprised at the intensity of daylight on Mars for some reason, and it’s good to get photos of the distant objects and landscapes that haven’t been doctored.

This could possibly go in ‘Signs of Hope’ but renewables now count for more than half (112.5 Gigawatts) of Germany’s electricity production. Coal, Gas and Nuclear account for 105.1 Gigawatts.

The fossil fuel lobbyists inside and outside the government predicted massive price rises and outages from a reliance on renewables. That didn’t happen.

Imagine what a less densely populated country with huge amounts of wind (like say Ireland) could do. Just saying.

Note this is only electricity production not total energy usage (they often get confused). Heating and transport are still overwhelmingly fossil fuel based. So not much of a sign of hope, given that CO2 output is increasing world-wide.

Yeah, I often easily forget about the distinction between production and usage, especially as there needs to be a continual base load production across an entire 24 hour period. If only the push for renewable had occurred during the mid 1970s, the use of fossil fuels would have been curtailed and kept in the ground. (But we need to think of the billions created for the wealth! /s) (Also, I’m also ignoring transportation, etc, usage.)

TBH, given the requirements for base load production, I don’t see fossil fuels being eliminated entirely in the immediate future, if ever. While there seems to be some progress on battery storage, I believe there are terrible environmental and contiguous social issues associated with lithium and rare earth metals used in storage.

I kind of wonder, Germany being Germany, if they may have already reached renewable saturation and that any new inputs are going to be very marginal in nature going forward.

As for Ireland, hmm…we have only one question to answer…can renewables make the rich richer? if not…

And of course, the growth in German renewables has been greatly aided by legislation enabling local communities to form energy co-ops, that can then sell surplus energy back to the national grid, thereby preventing the disputes that are so common here.

It’s not for us to say. I know plenty of “woke” females who still want engage in traditionally feminine things. That’s their choice. I know it can be complicated, but truly, not our place to call them out.

“It’s not for us to say. I know plenty of “woke” females who still want engage in traditionally feminine things.”

I’m aware of that, and also how there are few things more irritating then a man telling women “You’re doing feminism wrong!”

A woman writing about her make-up routine wouldn’t normally be objectionable. But it is trivialising in the extreme
to stick a left-wing term into a piece promoting consumerism
of cosmetics (nine different brands of cosmetics are named-checked).

And Katie Herzog can and should critique to her hearts content. I’m not defending the ad. I’m simply stating in the most polite way I can think of that it’s not for a site made up of 99% dudes to venture down that path.

“Although there had been no posters or leaflets advertising it, there were about 150 people there. There seemed to be a couple of distinct groupings. The majority were there because of feeling that they had no one to vote for in relation to the right to life.
There was a tiny group there who were hoping Tóibín would have an anti-immigration platform. They were given a polite hearing and an equally polite and firm assurance that this would not be part of the policy platform.”

Can’t really see much of a future for Tóibín’s party based on the take in the full article.

Its greatly to be welcomed that the anti-immigrant strain does not seem to be taking hold in Ireland. But there’s a piece in Counterpunch by Kerron Ó Luain offering some support to Angela Nagle’s ‘ The Left Case against Open Borders’

Worth noting that the author is a racist, anti-immigrant crackpot, whom the Tablet's editors appear to have picked up at the New English Review. It says a lot about their dire editorial standards that this piece appeared at all.